Groundlessness of all knowledge

[mytruepower2]

Hmm…I agree that pure logic and mathematics is based on fundamental tautology- “X=X”.

But even “X=X” seems to be based on ungrounded assumptions. How do we know that the second X refers to the same thing as the first? Do they refer to the ‘same’ thing, or two different things which are the same? (This is badly worded, but I’m sure you understand.)

In what sense is ‘=’ understood? Two ten pound notes ‘equal’ tweny pound note, but only in a certain sense (in reference to nominal value, but NOT in reference to color, shape, size). So, equality itself is ambiguous.

And how do we know even that the graphic marking “X=X” means anything at all, and, if it does, what should it mean? Surely, what it means is determined purely by conventions of language. To a primitive native with a different language, it might mean something entirely different, or nothing at all.

I think we are on shaky ground, even in asserting “X=X” to be necessarily true. At its basis, it seems like simply an accepted assertion- an arbitrary rule of language.

No, I wouldn’t say it’s shaky ground at all. The very -idea- of a tautology is “something which is necessarily true in every possible interpretation.” There is no possible interpretation in which “X=X” would be false, and therefore, it must be true.

You can’t get more self-evident than a tautology, or more dependable.

 

[Ryuji_Yamazaki]

Nihilism: … I don’t know whether what I said before is true, I don’t know whether what I said before is true, …

Contradiction: 0) this isn’t true. If 0) is true then 0) isn’t true then 0) is true then… If 0) isn’t true then 0) is true then 0) isn’t true…

Time is contradiction. Time is illusion.
Synthesis is contradiction except out of contradiction. Synthesis is synthesis of thesis & antithesis.

You shall not be abstracted, synthesized out of time, born of the Spirit except out of contradiction. Who is the contradiction of the Spirit? What does it mean to know?

It is written “be fruitful, and multiply”. You see, in this world there’s two kinds of people, my friend: Those who live in heaven and those who live on earth. Those who live in heaven know the Spirit, those who live on earth know each other.

Yaw-dah’, ginosko: know. The Hebrew & Greek, contradictory nations, agree on the notion “to know” being out of contradiction. To know on earth is the shadow, contradiction of to know in heaven. The synthesis of to know on earth & to know in heaven is to know.

Why are there so many perverts? Because those who live on earth must not be deprived of women. If they are deprived of women, they shall carry out the order “be fruitful, and multiply” by working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.

 

[Bahman]

It seems those things which we assert or claim to know are either 1) groundless assumption, or 2) things which rest on some other pieces of knowledge or assertion. Now, for the latter category, it we trace the supporting knowledge or principles through sufficient steps, we always arrive at a groundless assumption.

For example, we ‘know’ that “There sun is larger than the moon”, because we have read it in books. We ‘know’ that those books can be believed because we trust the expertise of the authors. We trust the expertise of the authors because the majority of other people seem to do so. But why should we give any particular credence to a majority opinion? Here we have a groundless assumption. The fact that many people agree on this groundless assumption is no proof of its truth, since we know that, in the past, the majority have often agreed upon errors.

And, if the knowledge is derived from our perceptions, why should we trust them? It is only our perceptions which verify our perceptions, and thus the whole complex is circular. To trust our perceptions seems to be a groundless assumption.

Now, if all our knowledge, if traced back far enough, is ultimately based on some groundless assumption, why not simply boldly embrace any groundless assumption at the beginning? Surely a piece of ‘knowledge’ which rests, ultimately, on some fundamental groundless assumption has no more merits than the groundless assumption itself, and surely all groundless assumptions are of equal truth value.

Hence it would seem that what passes as ‘knowledge’ is no better than pure unsupported assertions, since one is no more secure in its epistemological basis than the other.

The main question is that how we are able to construct knowledge based on our perception? State of knowledge is questioned when we are facing an anomaly. To resolve anomaly one needs to construct new state of knowledge which either accept the old state of knowledge as a sub-state or completely deny it. State of knowledge will never reach to a point that we can claim that we know the absolute truth, but truth as far as we are not facing an anomaly.

 

[Bahman]

I am not sure if my question is valid. But, if all knowledge ultimately rests on some ungrounded assumption, what possible criteria could there be for determining ‘validity’ or ‘meaning’? The criteria for ‘validity’ would either be asserted without basis, or would rest on something else, which ultimately would arrive at some other ungrounded assertion.

We do it opposite, namely we accept the state of knowledge as truth if it is anomaly free.

 

[petra22]

Um… 99.99999 % of Knowledge is Based on fact…
Just because we see the moon as a big thing in the sky… we cant assume its bigger than the sun… because the sun has been measured… and yes it’s a whole lot bigger…
and a whole lot hotter… I can feel the heat from here…
Before navigation people believed the earth to be flat… but through investigation it was discovered to be actually round… I

I like this part…

 

[St_Francis]

I’m not saying perception aren’t true. They COULD be true. Again, I don’t ‘believe’ what I have written, but it COULD be true. Since both positions are fundamentally ungrounded, they perhaps can be entertained as equal possibilities.

For each of the “why’s?” you raise, there exists a corresponding “why not?” For every “Why continue to do X”, there is an equally valid “Why not continue to do X?”

Yes, I observe that I continue to behave as if I believed my perceptions. I am not sure why, as I have no particular epistemological commitment to them. But then, the very perception by which I become aware of ‘my’ ‘actions’ seem to have no particular truth claims.

I find it interesting and very telling that all of the philosophers who pose this question, including its originator, have chosen the “why not” path.

I think this can be refuted on two grounds: surprise and communication.

Obviously if all is merely a figment of our imaginations, then we couldn’t be surprised, and yet we continually are.

Also, we learn things from others and these things are true and previously outside our knowledge.

I really think that this line of thinking is very bad and dangerous. It makes us feel more powerful than we are while at the same time devaluing the existence of everything else, including other people.

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

It seems those things which we assert or claim to know are either 1) groundless assumption, or 2) things which rest on some other pieces of knowledge or assertion. Now, for the latter category, it we trace the supporting knowledge or principles through sufficient steps, we always arrive at a groundless assumption.

For example, we ‘know’ that “There sun is larger than the moon”, because we have read it in books. We ‘know’ that those books can be believed because we trust the expertise of the authors. We trust the expertise of the authors because the majority of other people seem to do so. But why should we give any particular credence to a majority opinion? Here we have a groundless assumption. The fact that many people agree on this groundless assumption is no proof of its truth, since we know that, in the past, the majority have often agreed upon errors.

And, if the knowledge is derived from our perceptions, why should we trust them? It is only our perceptions which verify our perceptions, and thus the whole complex is circular. To trust our perceptions seems to be a groundless assumption.

Now, if all our knowledge, if traced back far enough, is ultimately based on some groundless assumption, why not simply boldly embrace any groundless assumption at the beginning? Surely a piece of ‘knowledge’ which rests, ultimately, on some fundamental groundless assumption has no more merits than the groundless assumption itself, and surely all groundless assumptions are of equal truth value.

Hence it would seem that what passes as ‘knowledge’ is no better than pure unsupported assertions, since one is no more secure in its epistemological basis than the other.

It would seem you are defining groundlessness as unproven and then what is unproven as an assumption.

However what is evident to the senses or to, as Aristotle would call it, “intuitive reason” is not proven but also not an assumption. It is evident. That is, acquaintance with life shows that sense experience (including implicit judgments not just raw impressions on sense organs) in the vast majority cases is trustworthy or self-correcting. And reflection shows that first principles, evident (or self-evident) to the intellect, are involved in all knowing and thinking.

To your point sense perception is shaped by the given historical, cultural, linguistic tradition in which one find oneself. But that too is also corrected and adjusted by further experience with reality.

I actually find this question very interesting and have accumulated a number of texts on the subject.

Some quotes from just one work:

A postulate is not self-evident; what is self-evident is not postulated, it is seen.”
[Etienne Gilson, *Thomist Realism And The Critique of Knowledge (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), p. 51, n. 32]

“What, then, is a postulate? It is a proposition that must be accepted as true, although it is neither evident nor demonstrable. Any manual on the logic of the sciences will present this definition. If the proposition in question is evident, it is an axiom or a principle, not a postulate. If the proposition is demonstrable, it is neither a postulate nor a principle, but a conclusion.”
[Etienne Gilson, *Thomist Realism And The Critique of Knowledge (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), p. 179.]

“No one really doubts that sight, touch, hearing, taste and even smell are normally competent to attest to existence, and whenever it is necessary it verify the existence of anything it is to the testimony of one or more of the senses that we turn. This conviction of the reliability of our senses is simply the self-evidence of our experience. Since we are here concerned with self-evidence, it is futile to demand a demonstration. All we can do for someone who does not see something is to point it out to him. If he then sees it, well and good, but we cannot prove to him that he does see it.”
[Etienne Gilson, *Thomist Realism And The Critique of Knowledge (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), p. 181]

 

[mikekle]

It seems those things which we assert or claim to know are either 1) groundless assumption, or 2) things which rest on some other pieces of knowledge or assertion. Now, for the latter category, it we trace the supporting knowledge or principles through sufficient steps, we always arrive at a groundless assumption.

For example, we ‘know’ that “There sun is larger than the moon”, because we have read it in books. We ‘know’ that those books can be believed because we trust the expertise of the authors. We trust the expertise of the authors because the majority of other people seem to do so. But why should we give any particular credence to a majority opinion? Here we have a groundless assumption. The fact that many people agree on this groundless assumption is no proof of its truth, since we know that, in the past, the majority have often agreed upon errors.

And, if the knowledge is derived from our perceptions, why should we trust them? It is only our perceptions which verify our perceptions, and thus the whole complex is circular. To trust our perceptions seems to be a groundless assumption.

Now, if all our knowledge, if traced back far enough, is ultimately based on some groundless assumption, why not simply boldly embrace any groundless assumption at the beginning? Surely a piece of ‘knowledge’ which rests, ultimately, on some fundamental groundless assumption has no more merits than the groundless assumption itself, and surely all groundless assumptions are of equal truth value.

Hence it would seem that what passes as ‘knowledge’ is no better than pure unsupported assertions, since one is no more secure in its epistemological basis than the other.

If you look back thru history, most things thought to be fact were eventually proven wrong, even when a majority of the population at one time bought into it. one example, when everyone thought the earth was flat, and to even suggest otherwise was unheard of, but we know today they were all wrong, there are many many other examples of this over the years too.

Knowing this, we can only assume most of what our ‘experts’ today call fact, will eventually be proven wrong or inaccurate. I like to guess about some of the things considered fact today that will be proven wrong though. I think most of our understanding of psychics will be proven inaccurate as we learn more about the universe and how things actually work.

Things designed for safety has also been a major example of things proven wrong over the years, remember when everyone thought radium was the greatest thing ever? LOL or the first child seats for cars? etc etc. I also think about some of our things designed for safety today, that in time will be proven to be actually deadly or totally wrong/inaccurate designing! we know for a fact it will happen with most of our ideas though.

 

[Aloysium]

If you look back thru history, most things thought to be fact were eventually proven wrong, even when a majority of the population at one time bought into it. . . .

This is a secular myth.
What is important has never been “proven wrong”. Truth in fact is eternal.
What is trivial, that which realy does not matter, changes.
What is truly important to living one’s life, to one’s happiness and being a decent person does not change.
Our toys change, what we use to kill each other becomes more sophisticated.
Who would I trust? I would take a God-loving believer in creation over someone up on the latest scientific fad, doing his own thing.
Seriously, if one is interested in finding truth, this has to be one of the first assumptions to throw out.

 

[dshix]

It seems those things which we assert or claim to know are either 1) groundless assumption, or 2) things which rest on some other pieces of knowledge or assertion. Now, for the latter category, it we trace the supporting knowledge or principles through sufficient steps, we always arrive at a groundless assumption.

For example, we ‘know’ that “There sun is larger than the moon”, because we have read it in books. We ‘know’ that those books can be believed because we trust the expertise of the authors. We trust the expertise of the authors because the majority of other people seem to do so. But why should we give any particular credence to a majority opinion? Here we have a groundless assumption. The fact that many people agree on this groundless assumption is no proof of its truth, since we know that, in the past, the majority have often agreed upon errors.

And, if the knowledge is derived from our perceptions, why should we trust them? It is only our perceptions which verify our perceptions, and thus the whole complex is circular. To trust our perceptions seems to be a groundless assumption.

Now, if all our knowledge, if traced back far enough, is ultimately based on some groundless assumption, why not simply boldly embrace any groundless assumption at the beginning? Surely a piece of ‘knowledge’ which rests, ultimately, on some fundamental groundless assumption has no more merits than the groundless assumption itself, and surely all groundless assumptions are of equal truth value.

Hence it would seem that what passes as ‘knowledge’ is no better than pure unsupported assertions, since one is no more secure in its epistemological basis than the other.

I detest deconstructionism.

 

[St_Francis]

If you look back thru history, most things thought to be fact were eventually proven wrong, even when a majority of the population at one time bought into it. one example, when everyone thought the earth was flat, and to even suggest otherwise was unheard of, but we know today they were all wrong, there are many many other examples of this over the years too.

Well, actually, most people were as observant as Columbus and thought the world was round. In 1492, the big question was how big around?

Aside from that, how is it that mosconceptions and erroneous ideas have been corrected? Usually by applying our senses and investigating the subsequent perceptions, no? Have any of the wrong ideas you mention been proven correct by application of the idea that things don’t really exist? No! They are corrected by an improvement in our ability to interpret what we perceive (eg, higher math) or improvement in our senses (eg, telescopes).

So the fact that there were errors in people’s interpretations of what they perceived does not lend credence to Quoeleth’s ideas.

 

[polytropos]

I am not sure why, as I have no particular epistemological commitment to them. But then, the very perception by which I become aware of ‘my’ ‘actions’ seem to have no particular truth claims.

I would contend that you do have an epistemological commitment to your perceptions. They are either true or false. If they are false, then it would seem that you are unable to get truth elsewhere, so you must act and believe as though they are generally true.

I’d also follow Hilary Putnam and James Ross in arguing that solipsism is vacuous, given that our perceptions return overflow significations (necessities about that extend beyond our verbal significations or even our conscious knowledge) that could not be explained without a real world and relatively reliable perceptions.

 

[tonyrey]

…It is only our perceptions which verify our perceptions, and thus the whole complex is circular. To trust our perceptions seems to be a groundless assumption.

How do you **know **that only our perceptions verify our perceptions?

And why do you trust your judgment about anything?

 

[tonyrey]

It would seem you are defining groundlessness as unproven and then what is unproven as an assumption.

However what is evident to the senses or to, as Aristotle would call it, “intuitive reason” is not proven but also not an assumption. It is evident. That is, acquaintance with life shows that sense experience (including implicit judgments not just raw impressions on sense organs) in the vast majority cases is trustworthy or self-correcting. And reflection shows that first principles, evident (or self-evident) to the intellect, are involved in all knowing and thinking.

To your point sense perception is shaped by the given historical, cultural, linguistic tradition in which one find oneself. But that too is also corrected and adjusted by further experience with reality.

I actually find this question very interesting and have accumulated a number of texts on the subject.

Some quotes from just one work:

A postulate is not self-evident; what is self-evident is not postulated, it is seen.”
[Etienne Gilson, *Thomist Realism And The Critique of Knowledge (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), p. 51, n. 32]

“What, then, is a postulate? It is a proposition that must be accepted as true, although it is neither evident nor demonstrable. Any manual on the logic of the sciences will present this definition. If the proposition in question is evident, it is an axiom or a principle, not a postulate. If the proposition is demonstrable, it is neither a postulate nor a principle, but a conclusion.”
[Etienne Gilson, *Thomist Realism And The Critique of Knowledge

(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), p. 179.]

“No one really doubts that sight, touch, hearing, taste and even smell are normally competent to attest to existence, and whenever it is necessary it verify the existence of anything it is to the testimony of one or more of the senses that we turn. This conviction of the reliability of our senses is simply the self-evidence of our experience. Since we are here concerned with self-evidence, it is futile to demand a demonstration. All we can do for someone who does not see something is to point it out to him. If he then sees it, well and good, but we cannot prove to him that he does see it.”
[Etienne Gilson, *Thomist Realism And The Critique of Knowledge (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), p. 181]
Sanity!

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

How do you **know **that only our perceptions verify our perceptions?

And why do you trust your judgment about anything?

Right. If all claims are groundless and/or circular, then so is this assertion of his.

 

[Jaaanosik]

The original post is a contradiction and a hypocrisy in itself.
Talking about groundlessness of all knowledge by using human nature - capability to reason/think.

Where is the groundlessness in that?

 

[mytruepower2]

The original post is a contradiction and a hypocrisy in itself.
Talking about groundlessness of all knowledge by using human nature - capability to reason/think.

Where is the groundlessness in that?

Ooh! When you said it was a contradiction, you were closing in on a killing blow to the argument.

You see, the claim is self-defeating. Even if you can provide some evidence that all knowledge is groundless, well… what about that knowledge? Isn’t that knowledge also groundless? So even if this philosophical conclusion -could be- advanced, it ultimately wouldn’t matter, because it’s groundless, and so nothing else would follow from it.

In fact, the claim is groundless whether or not it’s true. If it’s true that all statements are groundless, then so is that claim. If it’s false, it’s also groundless, because it’s false.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

It seems those things which we assert or claim to know are either 1) groundless assumption, or 2) things which rest on some other pieces of knowledge or assertion. Now, for the latter category, it we trace the supporting knowledge or principles through sufficient steps, we always arrive at a groundless assumption.

For example, we ‘know’ that “There sun is larger than the moon”, because we have read it in books. We ‘know’ that those books can be believed because we trust the expertise of the authors. We trust the expertise of the authors because the majority of other people seem to do so. But why should we give any particular credence to a majority opinion? Here we have a groundless assumption. The fact that many people agree on this groundless assumption is no proof of its truth, since we know that, in the past, the majority have often agreed upon errors.

And, if the knowledge is derived from our perceptions, why should we trust them? It is only our perceptions which verify our perceptions, and thus the whole complex is circular. To trust our perceptions seems to be a groundless assumption.

Now, if all our knowledge, if traced back far enough, is ultimately based on some groundless assumption, why not simply boldly embrace any groundless assumption at the beginning? Surely a piece of ‘knowledge’ which rests, ultimately, on some fundamental groundless assumption has no more merits than the groundless assumption itself, and surely all groundless assumptions are of equal truth value.

Hence it would seem that what passes as ‘knowledge’ is no better than pure unsupported assertions, since one is no more secure in its epistemological basis than the other.

All knowledge begins with the senses, we live in a real world and we know it to a high degree of accuracy. St. Thomas has a lot to say on human knowledge. Edward Feser has a lot to say in Aquinas and on his blog. William A. Wallace has some interesting things to say in From a Realist Point of View and in the New Catholic Encyclopedia.
Even G.K. Chesterton and Blessed John Henry Neuman.

All would say that the certitude of our knowledge varies and is most certain in what we know by Faith.

Linus2nd

 

[Qoeleth]

How do you **know **that only our perceptions verify our perceptions?

And why do you trust your judgment about anything?

Indeed, I don’t KNOW. Either my perceptions are only justified by my perceptions, or they are justified by something else. But what justifies belief in that ‘something else’? Is it perception, or yet another ‘something else’. We arrive either at infinite regress, or circularity.

Indeed, and I have no particular reason to trust my own judgment, any more than that of anyone else. Why should I give it any preference?

But it MIGHT be true, and that is enough to unbalance all certainty. Perhaps. Nothing can be determined.

 

[Qoeleth]

Right. If all claims are groundless and/or circular, then so is this assertion of his.

Ooh! When you said it was a contradiction, you were closing in on a killing blow to the argument.

You see, the claim is self-defeating. Even if you can provide some evidence that all knowledge is groundless, well… what about that knowledge? Isn’t that knowledge also groundless? So even if this philosophical conclusion -could be- advanced, it ultimately wouldn’t matter, because it’s groundless, and so nothing else would follow from it.

In fact, the claim is groundless whether or not it’s true. If it’s true that all statements are groundless, then so is that claim. If it’s false, it’s also groundless, because it’s false.

Yes, you are both right, but also both wrong, in a sense.

A necessary consequence of my position, as you both note, is that it requres that one have no particular epistemological committment to the view it advances. Thus the opinion I advance is no more nor no less groundless than any other opinion.

But that doesn’t disprove it. Au contraire, it PROVES it.

It is like saying “All sentences bend contains subjects and predicates.” Now, the fact that that very sentence contains a subject and predicate dissprove its assertion, but rather provides evidence of it. Similarly with my contention that “All knowledge is groundless.”

Now, I am not asserting the position that “all knowledge is groundless” in any dogmatic or authoritive way. It might be true, equally it might not. Since both positions are equally groundless, there is no grounds for preference on way or the other.